1 Razor

Why Joker is the Most Overrated Movie of the Year

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Joker
  • IMDb: link

Joker movie reviewAlthough it has been phenomenally successful at the box office, writer/director Todd Phillips‘ film focused on the origins of the most famous Bat-villain has divided critics. Forgetting for a moment that attempting to rationalize and explain one of the most inexplicable characters ever created is a terrible, terrible idea doomed to failure, Phillips’ choices over the course of Joker leave much to be desired.

Stealing its plot from two different Martin Scorsese films (Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy) and adding a layer of DC Comics on top which acts more of a fuck you to fans than celebration of the character (purposely making claims that fly in the face of 80 years of comic writing), Phillips offers a script to explain the creation of the Joker. The movie isn’t a descent into madness, our lead character is already far gone by the time we meet him. Instead, Joker examines how a shitbag like our protagonist became the most famous villain in Gotham. And, in one of the film’s most troubling aspects, excuse that behavior by re-purposing the blame of the Joker’s actions on society itself. The Joker doesn’t kill people, society kills people.

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Holmes & Watson

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Holmes & Watson
  • IMDb: link

Holmes & Watson Blu-ray reviewHolmes & Watson sets a new bar for the worst Sherlock Holmes adaption ever made. It’s likely it will keep that honor for several years, if not decades. Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly don’t so much play Sherlock Holmes and Dr. James Watson as reprise their roles from Step-Brothers playacting what they mistakenly believe 19th Century versions of the characters must have been like.

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The Outpost – One Is the Loneliest Number

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: The Outpost – One is the Loneliest Number
  • IMDb: link

The Outpost - One Is the Loneliest Number television review

Even with accomplished actors, a substantial budget, and intelligent writing, it’s difficult to make fantasy work on-screen. The Outpost has none of these things. A cross between a fan film and a larping expedition, the opening episode of The Outpost introduces us to an elfish young woman named Talon (Jessica Green) who has lived in hiding as a human since her family was butchered by human soldiers 13 years ago. Working as a barmaid has its privileges it seems, as it has somehow also given her great abilities with a sword (enough to kill several fully-armed soldiers). After waiting for years, Talon is off to find and murder the men responsible for the death of her family which leads her to an outpost on the frontier where she comes face-to-face with her first intended victim.

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The Hitman’s Bodyguard

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Hitman’s Bodyguard
  • IMDb: link

The Hitman's Bodyguard movie reviewWhen searching for something, anything, positive to say about a bad movie you can almost always fall back on “Well, at least it was in focus.” Sadly, I can’t even offer that most basic of compliments to The Hitman’s Bodyguard in which any strong ambient light destroys the focus of the shot, highlighting characters in a fuzzy glow while blurring out the entire background in a bizarrely amateurish manner.

Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson star in an uninspired buddy comedy about a once-proud bodyguard and his newest client, a man who has attempted to kill him on numerous occasions, who he needs to deliver in time to testify against a bland movie villain (Gary Oldman) for reasons that only makes sense in a script where things explode for no reason whatsoever.

Although there are some minor chuckles to be had (mostly from the pair adlibbing), and one strong chase sequence around the canals of Amsterdam, The Hitman’s Bodyguard is an uninspired mess featuring two actors screaming at each other for the better part of two hours.

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Assassin’s Creed

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Assassin’s Creed
  • IMDb: link

Assassin's Creed movie reviewStop when this gets too silly for you. For hundreds of years a creed (which is the franchise’s term for ill-defined shadowy group) of assassins has been in a secret war with the Knights Templar over control of a divine object know as the Apple that has to power to remove free will from all humankind. The Templars wish to use it to subjugate the human race. To find the lost artifact, the Templars steal a career criminal (Michael Fassbender) from his execution and hook him up to a machine which reads genetic memories from his code so he can relive his ancestor’s experiences while jumping around tied to a giant metal arm with those experiences manifested around him as ghostly visages.

Still with me? In charge of the project is a die-hard believer (Jeremy Irons) and his daughter the scientist (Marion Cotillard) who needs a blood descendant of the last person to have the Apple to lead the Templars to it (on the assumption that no one could have possilby found and/or moved it in more than half a millennium). The only way to find the Apple is to have these decedents of various assassins relive the experiences (gaining knowledge, purpose, and murderous skills which, of course, will eventually backfire on the evil corporation).

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